The Flying Kerbal

As yet I'm quite happy with KSP 1.2.2. I'm in the middle of a career game which is going really well and I don't want to risk upgrading and maybe wrecking it. But I'm curios to know is there much difference between 1.2.2 and 1.3? I know and welcome the introduction of the four new languages, which must be a good thing and will help spread the message to a larger audience. However apart from this, has very much changed or anything been added which I'm missing out on? Thanks everyone.

It took me several months of trying to get to Mun, but once you pull it off, your friends will be laughing at the stupid grin you'll be wearing all over your face!

Kerbals use fuses? I thought they just stuck a lump of wire or a 6" nail into the socket...

Is it only me who's getting a giggle out of this? I can just imagine Jeb with a crowbar, trying to pry open the service bay while in full EVA gear floating around the spacecraft.

I think they are there, under the construction tab alongside the stack decouplers.

@ Talavar: Oh excellent, many thanks for drawing my attention to this mod which I was unaware of before. At the minute I'm in the middle of my first "proper" career game, a few were started previously but for one reason or another were dropped, and am just preparing my first ever attempt at landing on Duna and Ike. However I will DEFINITELY be taking a closer look at this mod in the not-too-distant-future. I really do appreciate you taking the time to let me know about this mod, thanks very much.

Isn't it funny how different people tackle the same problem in so many different ways. There's you for example, hammering away with one big stage which you drop when the entire thing is drained, whereas I have a load of boosters connected up in an asparagus arrangement with bits showering down on the poor sods below like confetti! Still, as long as they all work, that's all that matters!

Hey, a question I can actually answer!!! First welcome to the wonderful world of KSP, and I hope you have as much fun (and frustration) playing this amazing game as I have! The basic problem in the Demo is the lack of parts, but a little bit of careful planning and you can do round trips to both Kerbin's moons and even put our little green heroes into solar orbit and get them back home safely. My problem when I was where you now find yourself, was that I was thinking too much along the lines of Apollo Saturn V type rockets with stages built on top of stages. That works if you have increasingly more powerful engines to use on the lower stages, just adding more of the same type of engines can take you so far, but finally the weight overwhelms the amount of available thrust and you won't get off the pad. It was a genuine flash of inspiration when it suddenly dawned on me that rather than heaping stages up on top of each other, I could add extra liquid boosters to the sides! Now instead of carrying a large number of engines that couldn't be used until lower stages were jettisoned, I could use a much greater number to get the rocket off the ground and into space. There was still one engine tucked away in an upper stage (to be used for TMI) and one in the actual spacecraft which I'm not including here, but with nine blasting away at full power on lift off, that wasn't an issue. Once this proved to be a really successful design, the whole of the Kerbin system was opened up to me. Since then I've started playing the full game more than the Demo, but I still play it, usually on a Sunday night when I want to fly/blow things up without getting into a serious session in KSP 1.2 as I have to get up for work the next morning. However my absolutely favourite mission to date is STILL one carried out in the Demo. A kinda similar to the Soviet plan to land man on the moon, I sent Jeb, Val and Bob out in a three Kerballed spacecraft, with a separate lander attached, to put the first footsteps on the surface of Minmus. It worked because I could get away with using only RCS to propel the lander, so I saved a lot of weight by not needing engines and their associated fuel tanks. I never got a similar mission to work for Mun (although I do still try), because an engine is needed to land on it, and I can't make LKO with sufficient Delta V to perform a TMI burn. If you click on my profile you'll be able to say Val at the bottom of the ladder on the RCS powered lander, as she became the first Kerbal to set foot on Minmus! So you really can do this, and once you pull it off once, you'll have no problems repeating the missions in more innovative and imaginative ways. Above all else though... HAVE FUN (and wear a crash helmet)!!

Multi-player gaming would be fun if you are into that, but for me I prefer to be playing on my own. What I would really like to see, but know it won't ever happen, is a system set up - maybe on servers similar to Elite: Dangerous - which would give us the opportunity to explore other star systems in the same galaxy as Kerbin. Alas when it comes to computer games, "...hope can drive a man insane", as Morgan Freeman said in Shawshank Redemption.

Thanks for all the answers guys. It looks like the majority decision is to use engines in both landers. Well there's no point in me asking for the opinions of experts and then doing my own thing anyway, so I guess it's back to the drawing office to start adding ants to them. As for the satellite, well the contract is for a PERFECTLY circular orbit of Duna with the Ap and Pe both at 2,880,000 meters with 0 degrees inclination. It says this is a geostationary orbit, with the vessel over a specific area (which I can't remember right now). So I'll just give it a wee go and will try to position it as close to the required specs as possible. If I can hold it for ten seconds I'll get my money, and hopefully Ike will leave it alone long enough for it to help transmit any science back to Kerbin. This will be the furthest the KSA has sent a mission in my Kerbal Universe to date, and I'm planning on fitting both landers with Communotron 16's while the satellite will be equipped with the RA-2 Relay Antenna. Would this be enough for transmitting all science gathered from all sources back to the KSC?

I'm gonna squeeze a few questions into this one, how's that for efficiency? First Jool... I've read and heard on numerous occasions that landing on Jool is impossible and any craft that tries it is going to be destroyed. But what I'm not sure about is if there is science to be found in the upper layers of the atmosphere which could be transmitted back to Kerbin before a probe would be rendered inoperable? There's no great rush on this one, a launch to the Jool system is still a long way off, but no harm in finding out these things in advance. Much more pressing issues are over Duna and Ike. I'm planning a jaunt in the very near future to fulfil a few contracts which include putting a satellite in a stationary orbit of Duna, and sending science back from the surface of the planet. I'm also planning on putting together a second lander which could land on Ike, then packaging everything on top of one rocket and lighting the touchpaper. Now questions: The lander for Duna is going to be about one ton weight, the science package sits on top of a heat shield which should take the brunt of any heating during descent. Would a probe as small as this be able to land only with parachutes, or does it need an engine to assist slowing down? I've tested it pretty extensively around Kerbin, shooting it up to close to a 200K orbit, dropping the periapsis to just 15K and then leave it to gravity to see what would happen. It came through the whole thing without a scratch, so I know it can certainly take a bit of heat. However aero braking in the Dunaian atmosphere is a very different thing to Kerbin, so would a similar approach to landing there work too (without such a steep drop though)? The last question is a simple one. Is it possible to land a probe on Ike using only RCS? I've done this successfully on Minmus, but I think Ike has more gravity, but not by much. I'm trying to keep the weight of the whole package as low as possible, and if I didn't need engines - and the fuel to run them - on my landers, it would make them both super light. Thanks everyone.

Hear Hear!! But let's all be optimistic, let's assume until proven wrong this is really gonna give our beloved little game a huge new lease of life. I don't know enough about the gaming industry to comment on TT (or any other company), so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I WILL be downloading as a backup a completely unmodded copy of the game however, being optimistic doesn't mean I can't take out an insurance policy. And full kudos and appreciation to everyone - past and present - at SQUAD who made this whole thing possible in the first place!

I'm really very happy with what I've got in KSP 1.2 (didn't upgrade to 1.3 - don't want to risk damaging my current career game), so if it was never improved again I wouldn't complain. However in a different thread someone said how they would like what can be seen of the other planets and moons in the Kerbol system being restricted to grainy and out of focus "telescopic images" until they had been explored using probes, etc. If this was to ever happen, which does sound like an awful lot of fun, then I would also like to see cameras being added to science so our probes could send back images of what they see. For some reason I always imagine these "photos" coming back to Mission Control in form of them being printed line by line from the top of the monitor to the bottom, a bit like how I suspect they would have been received back in the 60's when the USSR and NASA were doing this sort of thing. As I've said just a few moments ago though, I think we already have a really fantastic game and can't put into words just how much enjoyment I'm getting out of it, especially now as I've finally figured out how to get more rockets into orbit, instead of blowing up mid-flight and showering down like confetti all over the good planet Kerbin.

This is an excellent thread, now for my twopence worth and in no particular order: Thomas Andrews (designed the Olympic Class liners including Titanic on which he lost his life). Harry Ferguson (Irish engineer and aviation pioneer who invented the modern tractor, the Ferguson P99 Formula 1 racing car and was the first man to fly an aircraft in Ireland). Pete Conrad (but any of them really) R.J. Mitchell (designed the Supermarine Spitfire). Umberto Pugliese (Italian Naval Architect responsible for the Littorio Class battleships generally regarded as the most beautiful battleships ever built - especially the third of the class "RM Roma"). There, that's five and they're all dead. Five living are a bit trickier as I don't see many who I find all that inspiring these days, except for... HM Queen Elizebeth II Who else..? Prince Phillip (those two come as a set! ) John Cleese Marcus House (Tasmanian KSP'er who not only builds spacecraft which just oozes awesomeness, but also happens to be a really nice bloke). Holocaust survivors who are true and genuine heroes in my book. An honourable mention must go to "Pete", Amy Shira Teitel's pet cat! Obviously his owner would have to bring him to wherever we were going to meet up!

Oops... I wonder why I've got a funny feeling that that is what I did? Thanks for replying.

I'll try this tonight, but I think I did have both a pilot and electric charge and still couldn't get the resources going again. However I'm probably wrong when I say this, so will add it to the next Kemini mission - Kemini 4 - when Hayy (Command Pilot) and Jeb (Pilot) blast off to dock with a Kagena docking vehicle later this evening.

Morning everyone! Well, after repeated attempts at a rescue, I got frustrated at KSP and didn't bother with it for a few nights. The Kerbal needing help is in a funny orbit... it's very high, "going the wrong way" (east to west), at a high angle of inclination, and passes close enough to Mun so I get an encounter when I'm in its neighbourhood and that upsets my orbit. After more rocket launches than I've had hot dinners trying to reach that bleedin' Kerbal, I decided I'd shed enough blood sweat and tears and "walked away" (which means I got up in bad temper, cursing all Kerbalkind from the its earliest beginnings to whatever it evolves into in the far distant future). But now I've come up with a new idea on how to reach this guy; unfortunately I'm stuck in the office and won't get a chance to try it until tonight. But I'm way off topic here... I'm not (yet) looking for help on how to fulfil this contract and why I'm posting this is altogether much simpler. It's to do with resources which are disabled in the right click menu. Let's suppose you wanted to keep the 10 units of monopropellant which comes with a Mk1 Command Pod as a sort of emergency reserve and decide to disable it so it can't be used until you need it, how do you bring it back online? I've tried this a few times with monopropellant. and electric charge, but once I disable them I can't get them to reactivate later on? I suspect I'm missing something very simple and will feel like an idiot when I get the answer, but for now I'm stuck on this one. Thanks everyone.

Just time for one two quick images, the second is a close up of the first: Project Kemini: Kemini 2 and Kemini 3 were to practice orbital rendezvous manoeuvres, but Val in K2 got slightly carried away... 3.2 meters was close enough to warrant some rather "imaginative and colourful language" - as Mission Control described it - from Jachel and Alice Kerman in K3.

Sorry guys, unexpected visitors has forced me to sort out a few photos until tomorrow night. Alt+X sounds interesting, and I was unaware of it.

Burn times can be a right pain. My rather crude fix for this is to hit F5, fire up the engine(s) until I get a readout telling me how long the burn will take, then hit F9 and revert back to the game before going through this rigmarole. It's not perfect... it doesn't help if I have to stage mid burn for example, but it does help in a number of situations, such as if the entire burn is being made with a previously unfired engine or I've switched vessels. It's not really the answer though and it would be nice if this issue was fixed at some stage.

Thanks for all the replies guys. I'm just about off to work now but will post images later this evening.

I'm trying to figure out why my rockets always seem to go into a very slow, gentle spin while flying through the atmosphere during launch. Now I am the first to admit that when it comes to rocket design I'm not a prodigy of Wernher Von Braun, but at the same time, with the number of rockets I've stitched together these last few months I would expect to get the odd design right - even if only by sheer chance! This roll is not so serious as to pose a major threat to the launch, but it's just annoying constantly needing me to correct it with the Q & E keys. I've tried rockets with control surfaces, gimbals, RCS during launch... you name it but still this rolling persists. I suppose it's possible this is something in the game - a bug maybe(?) - but as I don't see messages from other people complaining about it I don't believe it is. I had thought it was related to the amount of acceleration the vessel was experiencing during the flight to space, but I've tried every possible level of throttle, from full heel-to-the-steel and the vessel resembling a blast furnace with all the heating effects, to a level were it was barely increasing velocity, but all to no avail. As I've said, it isn't really spoiling things, but it is irritating, especially if I'm trying to launch into an inclined orbit to match that of a ship I'm planning to rendezvous with (for example), something I'm pretty rotten at at the best of times. If any of you have experienced this, know what causes it and how to counter it, I'd really appreciate if you share your thoughts with me. Thanks all.

The (very) odd lightning strike might be fun, if for no other reason than to give us the opportunity to "Try SCE to AUX".

HAHA... yeah that sounds familiar. I even recall putting "One Small Stumble..." (more appropriate for our clumsy little friends) on the flag inscription.

I'm just curious to know if anybody enjoys any particular phase of a career game in KSP? Are you like me for example who really enjoys the early days as the Kerbal Space Program struggles to "break the chains of gravity", scraping every last little fraction of a point of science from various biomes to unlock the nodes in the tech tree which will let you get your first little Kerbanaut into orbit, and then the Mun and Minmus? Or maybe you enjoy spreading throughout the Kerbol system in huge ships you've had to assemble in LKO, planting your flags and setting up colonies? As I've already said, it's the early game I enjoy the most, and indeed it's the early days of space exploration in the real world I find much more interesting than anything that came post Apollo too.